Ed Morrison wrote:
I need advice on implementing a storage server. I really do not have
the $ to spend for a Dell iSCSI storage divice and I am thinking
trunning CentOS 5.x with ftp or FreeNAS. Here is what I am looking at
and concerned about.
Situation:
My current storage needs are approximately 1.5 TB annually. This will
increase to about 3.5 TB annually over the next 5 years (rough est.).
This box will just be a data archive and once it is full it will only be
used very infrequently if not used at all. Files are small up to 10 MB
but numerous.
First consider whether you can organize this into 1 TB or smaller
partitions that are mounted separately. If you can do that, growing the
space is trivial - and you get the advantage that you can do raid1
mirrors of individual drives which gives you the ability to recover data
from any single disk.
CentOS:
Upgrading to the newer CentOS flavors. I will not have the ability to
archive this data to tape and I am concerned about loosing the data when
upgrading the OS. How best to handle this?
Don't put the permanent storage on your system drive(s) at all. Add one
or more directories after installation and mount the additional
partitions or raid arrays there. Then if you do a new install, just
uncheck the devices as disks that can be used for the system and add the
mount points back when it is done. But, there are lots of other ways
to lose data. If you'd need it after a building fire/flood or operator
error you should build two of these and rsync to somewhere offsite.
Storage limitation. It is my understanding that there is a 2 TB storage
limitation with Linux (and windows) in general particularly for
stability.
I think that's 8TB if you don't boot from it. But that's per mounted
filesystem - if you can have smaller separate partitions, it won't matter.
FreeNAS
Anyone using FreeNAS? What is your experience? How easy is it to add
new drives and keep your data? Upgrading to newer versions?
You might look at openfiler if you want an appliance.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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